1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a disk drive suspension comprising a tongue on which a slider is mounted, and a conducting member connected to the slider.
2. Description of the Related Art
A hard disk drive (HDD) is used in an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer. The HDD comprises a magnetic disk rotatable about a spindle, a carriage turnable about a pivot, etc. The carriage comprises an actuator arm, and is configured to be turned transversely relative to tracks of the disk about the pivot by a positioning motor such as a voice coil motor.
A suspension is mounted on the actuator arm. The suspension comprises a load beam, and a flexure disposed to overlap the load beam. A slider, which constitutes a magnetic head, is mounted on a tongue of a gimbal portion formed near a distal end of the flexure. The slider is provided with elements (transducers) for accessing data, that is, for reading or writing data. A conducting member is connected to the slider. The load beam, the flexure, the slider, the conducting member, etc., constitute a head gimbal assembly.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,965,499 (Patent Document 1) and U.S. Pat. No. 8,000,061 (Patent Document 2), a head gimbal assembly comprising an outrigger portion comprising a pair of arms in the exterior of a tongue is known. In this type of head gimbal assembly, a conducting member may be arranged in the interior of the outrigger portion, that is, between the arm and the tongue.
In order to deal with increased recording density of disks, the magnetic head needs to be more precisely positioned relative to the recording surface of the disk. In order to achieve this, dual-stage-actuator (DSA) suspensions, which use both positioning motors (voice coil motors) and microactuator elements made of a piezoelectric material such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), have been developed. Further, as disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2010-146631 (Patent Document 3) and Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2010-218626 (Patent Document 4), a DSA suspension with microactuator elements mounted on a gimbal portion of a flexure is known.
A slider mounted on a tongue of a head gimbal assembly needs to be maintained at a predetermined position (attitude) with respect to the recording surface of a disk. Accordingly, the pitch stiffness and the roll stiffness of the tongue must be appropriate. As disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2, in the case where the conducting member is arranged in the interior of the outrigger portion, movement of the tongue is susceptible to rigidity of the conducting member. For example, when the bending stiffness of the conducting member is high, the pitch stiffness and the roll stiffness of the tongue tend to be high.
Hence, a countermeasure that has been conceived was reducing the bending stiffness of the conducting member by forming a bendable portion in a portion of the conducting member. However, the conducting member comprising the bendable portion has a problem that it is easily vibrated since the stiffness is low. In particular, in the DSA suspension including the microactuator elements mounted on the gimbal portion as those described in Patent Documents 3 and 4, a problem arose that the tongue and the conducting member are easily vibrated when the microactuator elements are actuated.
If the conducting member is fixed to a protrusion formed in a portion of the outrigger portion, as described in Patent Document 2, for example, it may be possible to reduce vibration of the conducting member. However, if the bendable portion of the conducting member is fixed to the outrigger portion, coupling of a mode of vibration of the outrigger portion and a mode of vibration of the conducting member amplifies the vibration, which may generate large vibration in the gimbal portion.